1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to radio and television transmission line systems, and particularly to a transmission line damage and detection system wherein one or more sensor nodes are introduced into a transmission line at specified intervals in order to detect acoustic or chemical anomalies, determine the severity of each anomaly and to assign various alarm levels to each anomaly occurrence based upon a comparison of each with a table of acceptable ultrasonic noise and gaseous chemical contamination readings.
2. Description of Related Art
In typical radio and television transmission systems, anomalies often occur in the system due to a variety of factors. These anomalies may be acoustic or chemical in nature and in both cases affect the transmitted signal. While voltage standing wave fault detection systems may be in use in the industry, they are generally highly inaccurate, error-prone systems that ignore all but the most serious fault conditions that more often than not fail to properly detect system anomalies or do so at a vary high repair cost to the system operator due to the level of sustained damage.
The present invention overcomes the shortcomings found in the prior art by providing a cost-effective transmission line safety monitoring system which detects and tracks acoustic and gaseous chemical anomalies along a transmission line to determine if a destructive event has occurred or is in mid-occurrence, by providing one or more sensors attached to an antenna and feed line transmission system. Analog audio signals are digitized and, along with detected gas purity deviations are transmitted to a remote master processing center where the signals are compared to an existing database of acceptable and non-acceptable signatures for pattern matches. The system operator may be informed, via visual or audio alarms, if any of the incoming signals are similar to or directly match one of the pre-entered non-acceptable signatures.
The present invention provides a transmission line safety detection and physio/electrical damage prevention system which effectively identifies acoustic and chemical anomalies along a transmission system, determines their severity and compares them against a database of allowable anomaly signatures in order to determine if an alarm needs to be rendered.
In the preferred embodiment, one more detectors are placed either on an antenna, the transmission line feeder system or associated feed line system, on a tower or support structure, or in the transmitter building to xe2x80x9clistenxe2x80x9d to the electrical samples being generated by the sensor system. The detectors search for the acoustic signature of the audio signal. The detector searches for one of two types of anomalies which may be present within the transmission system.
The detectors digitize the audio signal and transmit this signal to a remote processing unit. The processing unit then proceeds to determine the apparent severity of each detected anomaly. The processing unit contains a means for decoding the audio signal and comparing the decoded audio signal to a database of permissible sounds. Based upon the comparison of the incoming audio signal to the database of permissible sounds, the processor determines if a destructive event is present in the transmission system.
Depending on the results of the comparison, one of a variety of alarm events may be triggered and the operator informed so that he can take corrective action. Should the event be deemed severe enough, the detection system will initiate a system shut down to prevent further damage.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to detect and monitor acoustic and chemical anomalies which may be present along a transmission line, transmit the audio signals corresponding to these anomalies to a remote processing center, compare the transmitted signals to a library of permissible sounds, and to notify an operator of the severity of the anomaly should it be determined that the anomaly does not correspond to an allowable signal.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a monitoring system that includes software, supplied via a disk or a CD ROM, easily adaptable to a common P.C. type computing system.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide the user with a cost efficient means of monitoring transmission systems via the use of a custom-made package of hardware and software components derived for each specific application.
In accordance with these and other objects which will become apparent hereinafter, the instant invention will now be described with particular reference to the accompanying drawings.